The ability to quantify living cells is vitally important to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, environmental, manufacturing and clinical industries. Several methods are currently employed by these industries to quantify prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. These methods include, but are not limited to, the standard plate count, dye reduction and exclusion methods, electrometric techniques, microscopy, flow cytometry, bioluminescence and turbidity.
The standard plate count permits the quantitation of living cells (or clumps of cells) also known as colony forming units (cfu) when the cells are grown on the appropriate medium under optimal growth conditions (Microbial Ecology, Atlas, R. M. and Bartha, R., Addison Wesley, Longman, N.Y., 1998). Current standards of viable organism counts are often based on the standard plate count, particularly in the food industry. However, colony counts are difficult to interpret since bacteria often clump or form chains that can give rise to significantly inaccurate estimations of the total number of viable organisms in a sample. Also, bacteria, for example, can be in a “metabolically damaged” state and not form countable colonies on a given medium. This problem is more severe when selective media are used. Thus, the standard plate count does not provide a definitive count of viable cells in a sample, which may be very important for certain purposes. Given these factors, such testing also requires skilled technicians who can distinguish individual colony forming units and who can aid in selecting appropriate growth medium. Moreover, the technique is not useful when rapid determination of cell counts is required since it often requires over 24 hours to obtain results.
Other tests, such as, dye reduction tests rely on the ability of cells to oxidize or reduce a particular dye (Harrington, 1998). Such methods are used to measure the activity of metabolically active organisms rather than provide a measure of the total number of viable cells in a sample. Dyes, such as methylene blue, coupled with microscopic counting, are routinely employed to determine the relative number of microorganisms. The technique is widely employed but nevertheless suffers from factors that must be held constant during the assay, e.g., medium used, chemical conditions, temperature and the types of cells being examined. Also, dye reduction tests that incorporate microscopic counting techniques require trained technical personnel and often depend on subjective interpretations.
Dye exclusion methods of cell quantitation depend on the living cells having the ability to pump the dye out of the cell and into the surrounding fluid medium. While the dye may enter the interior of both living and dead cells, dead cells are not capable of actively pumping the dye out under the conditions normally used. Dye exclusion is commonly employed to enumerate animal, fungal and yeast cells. It is a method requiring skill, correct timing and proper choice of dye. It is not applicable to certain microbes and it yields incorrect viable counts with stressed cells.
An accurate estimation of the number of viable yeast cells in a sample can be obtained by the slide viability technique (Gilliland, 1959). The yeast cells are suspended in a growth medium containing 6% gelatin and the suspension is placed in a hemocytometer slide. The cell suspension is incubated for approximately 20 hours and the numbers of micro colonies are counted. Cells that form micro colonies are viable and dead cells remain as single cells. This technique is considered by the brewing industry to be the most definitive test for counting the number of viable yeast cells. Unfortunately, the long incubation time makes it unacceptable as a routine method.
Microscopic techniques typically involve counting a dilution of cells on a calibrated microscopic grid, such as a hemocytometer. A recent improvement in this technique is the direct epifluorescent filter technique (DEFT) (Pettipher et al, 1989). In this technique, samples are filtered through a membrane filter that traps the cells to be counted. A fluorescent dye is attached to the cells, which are illuminated with ultraviolet light and counted. Unfortunately, the technique requires the use of an expensive microscope and a trained individual or an expensive automated system (Pettipher et al., 1989).
Yet other methods of quantitation use flow cytometry involves the differential fluorescent staining of cells suspended in a relatively clear fluid stream of low viscosity. The cell suspension is mixed with the fluorescent dye and illuminated in a flow cell by a laser or other light source. The labeled cells are automatically detected with the use of a fluorescence detector focused on the cells (Brailsford and Gatley, 1993 and Pinder et al, 1993). The technique requires, and is limited by, expensive equipment. Some flow cytometric devices have been used by the food and dairy industry, but their application has been limited by the high cost of instrumentation.
Bioluminescence has been routinely employed in the food sanitation industry to detect and quantify viable organisms and cells. The method involves the use of luciferin-luciferase to detect the presence of ATP (Harrington, 1998 and Griffith et al, 1994). When used to quantify cells, the technique depends on the assumption that there is a constant amount of ATP in a living cell. ATP levels vary in a single cell over more than two orders of magnitude, making this method a relatively inaccurate technique for the enumeration of viable organisms in a sample.
Turbidity of a liquid sample can also be measured as an indication of the concentration of cells due to the light scattering and absorbing qualities of suspended cells (Harrington, 1998). The method is old but it is still employed to estimate the bacterial concentration in a sample. The method is rapid and simple but is highly inaccurate since all cells, particles and substances, including non-living particulate matter, interfere with the interpretation of the results.
The present invention for the quantitation of both viable and nonviable cells is designed to overcome at least five problems that have been identified within the field. First, the new technology circumvents the need for training personnel in how to plate, grow and count viable cells from colonies on agar plates. It also eliminates nearly all training and maintenance costs associated with most of the other methods. Second, the invention substantially decreases the time needed to determine concentrations of cells such as yeast and bacteria. Under current methodologies, quantification requires from 24-72 hours (plate count and enrichment cultures), while the present invention permits accurate quantitation in less than 15 minutes. The methylene blue test is rapid; however, the accuracy is unacceptable for cultures that are less than 90% viable. The slide viability test is accurate for large viability ranges but the time required for results is not suitable for routine use. Third, the new test is accurate over wide ranges of viability and has precision similar to the slide viability test. Fourth, the instant invention offers substantial cost savings over existing methods of cell quantitation. Fifth, the invention permits the simultaneous determination of both viable and total cells in a sample. This allows the user to accurately establish the percent viability of a cell sample (the number of viable cells to total cells). Percent viability is a crucial measurement in many industries such as, the dairy and beer brewing industries and is currently carried out by the methylene blue test.